by Jan Karon
Twin girls, twin tousles of red hair, twin hugs—and yet, two thoroughly individual hearts, souls, minds, and spirits.
“Hey, yourself!” he exclaimed. “Come and tell me everything.”
Ah, but he fancied the grandchildren Puny had allowed him to adopt as his own. There was, however, no Granmaw in the household; no, indeed, Cynthia did not take to this folksy appellation, it was just plain Cynthia for all comers, regardless of age or station.
“This is for you!” said Sassy, removing something from her book sack. “It has my name on the bottom.”
He looked at the watercolor—a man sleeping in a wing chair with a huge black dog at his feet. The man possessed a large nose and was not wearing shoes.
“That’s you!” she said, looking pleased.
“Umm. Are you sure my nose is that big?”
“Miss Cynthy says it looks just like you!”
“An’ see, Granpaw, this is mine!” Sissy held up her own watercolor—a man lying on a sofa with a huge black dog sprawled beside him on the floor. “It’s you an’ Barnabas, I put Vi’let under the sofa, that’s her tail, do you like it?”
There was that turnip-size nose again. He reached up and felt the thing that extended from his face. “I couldn’t like it better. Why on earth were you painting me today?”
“Miss Hellman said do somebody, not your mama or your daddy, that you like really a lot.”
“Well, if that’s the case, maybe you wouldn’t mind being seen around town with me.” The twins began to jiggle on the balls of their feet, entering into an after-school game the three of them often played.
Father Tim scratched his head in mock puzzlement and inquired soberly, “But where on earth could we go?”
“Sweet Stuff !” they shouted in unison.
“I didn’t know you had grans!” Ada Rupert, who was buying a dozen oatmeal cookies for a visit of her own grandchildren, looked suspicious.
“I don’t,” he said. “Well, not exactly. I borrow my grans, you might say.”
“Humph,” said Ada. “I guess when there’s nothin’ to do all day, borrowin’ grans helps pass th’ time. As for me, I’ve got all I can say grace over without grans comin’ this afternoon to spend two days!”
He noticed Ada was huffing and blowing as if she’d run to the bakery from the top of the hill.
“Chocolate chip cookie!” said Sassy, standing on tiptoe and placing her order with Winnie.
“Cream horn!” proclaimed Sissy, indicating her choice by touching the glass case and leaving a smudge.
“Well!” said Ada, collecting her purchases and turning to leave.
“You can borrow mine anytime! Help yourself!”
He was ashamed to realize he’d fallen victim to Ada Rupert’s notoriously sharp tongue. Nothing to do all day? Nothing to do, indeed!
His face flamed as the bell jingled on the door, and he reached into his pocket and removed his wallet. “A cream horn, a chocolate chip cookie, and…” He stared into the case, stricken.
“And?” asked Winnie, peering at him.
His heart hammered. “And a napoleon!” he said, surprised to hear the forbidden order issue forth in his pulpit voice.
After dinner at the yellow house, he knocked on the rectory’s basement door.
Harley opened it, looking sheepish. “Law, Rev’ren’, you done caught me fryin’ onions! Step on in, I hope you don’t mind th’ smell.”
“Smells good! Won’t take but a minute, just wanted to say a friend is coming to town. He’ll need work and a place to live, says he can restore old cars and he’s willing to learn a trade. If that rings any bells, or if you hear of anything…”
“I’ll keep m’ eye out. Can you set down an’ visit?”
“Can’t do it tonight, thanks, we’re going to take a little stroll through Baxter Park. His name is George Gaynor. He’s…a convicted felon, out on parole after eight years in prison.”
Harley looked dismayed, then dropped his gaze to the floor.
“What is it, Harley?”
“Well, Rev’ren’, they’s one thing I ain’t never tol’ you. I was meanin’ to, but…th’ reason I didn’t never tell you is ’cause you didn’t never ask me.” Harley raised his head and looked his landlord in the eye. “I served time.”
“Aha.”
“What done it is, I was runnin’ from th’ police back when I was haulin’ liquor. I didn’t want t’ run, nossir, but I was s’ scared, I couldn’t think whether I wanted to keep a-goin’ and maybe git caught som’ers down th’ road, or stop an’ face th’ music.”
Harley sighed. “I kep’ a-goin’. They run me all th’ way to Cumberland County with fifty gallons of lightnin’ in m’ fender wells, an’ th’ harder they run me, th’ madder they got, ’cause I had a ’62 Chevy V-8 that went like a scalded dog.” Harley sighed again. “Pulled three years. Hit sobered me up, in a manner of speakin’.”
Father Tim nodded.
“I hate t’ tell you that, hit pains me.”
“What’s done is done.”
“When they let me out, I never hauled another drop. An’ not too long after that, I quit drinkin’ th’ lowdown stuff—just quit foolin’ with liquor all th’ way around.”
He put his hand on Harley’s shoulder. What would he do without this good man the Lord had dropped in his lap? “That hard thing had a bright side, then.”
Harley nodded, then grinned with relief, displaying pink gums entirely vacant of teeth.
“Keep your ear to the ground for George, if you will. He’ll be arriving sometime in June. You’ll like him, he’s a strong believer.”
“I’ll do it. An’ Rev’ren’…”
“Yes?”
“I wouldn’t want th’ boy t’ know, hit’d not be right f’r th’ boy t’ know what I tol’ you.”
“He won’t hear it from me.” He turned to go.
“Rev’ren’?” Harley swallowed hard. “I thank you f’r…lettin’ me tell you that.”
“I thank you for telling me,” he said.
He’d done everything possible to trace Dooley’s missing siblings. Sammy and Kenny had, in fact, been missing for more than nine years, and nothing, no matter what he did, seemed to result in useful clues. Dooley’s stepfather, Buck Leeper, was doing his share: He’d worked on a false lead to Kenny for a full year and it had turned into a dead end.
Locating the first two Barlowe children had been miraculously simple. Father Tim and Lace Turner had hauled Poo out of the Creek community, and Jessie, then five years old, had been traced to Florida. On the oddest of hunches, he and Cynthia had made the long trip to Lakeland with Jessie’s mother, Pauline, and now, thanks be to God, three of the five siblings were safe and accounted for. More than anything, yes, more than anything, he wanted to see the whole family reunited with their utterly transformed mother who had surrendered her life to Christ and married a believer who loved her kids.
He tried not to despair over the mounting discouragement he felt, and firmly denied the thought that occasionally came to him; the thought that, deep down, he had given up hope.
“Sit still,” he told his wife. “I’ll get it.”
He’d always rather liked a ringing doorbell. One never knew what surprise or even amazement might be waiting. It was a great deal like the mail in that regard.
He could scarcely see Jena Ivey, owing to the enormous basket of flowers she was delivering to their threshold. Jena ducked her head around the ivy that trailed profusely from one side.
“Congratulations!” she crowed, shoving the vast thing into his arms. He staggered backward from the weight of it.
“Congratulations? What did I do?”
“Nothing, as far as I know, it’s for Cynthia!” The hardworking owner of Mitford Blossoms was positively beaming.
“Of course! Yes, indeed. Good gracious….”
“It’s the most money anyone ever let me spend on an order,” she called after him. “I used everything but the kitchen sin
k!”
He trotted down the hall, peering carefully around a thicket of maidenhair fern so he wouldn’t crash into a wall, and delivered the basket to the study.
“There!” He set it on the hearth, nearly poking his eye on one of the several lengths of grapevine stuck capriciously into the moss. “I don’t know what it is; possibly a complete shire from the west of England!”
“How wonderful !” His wife bounded from the sofa, streaked to the thing, and buried her face in it, wreathed in smiles. “Heaven! Oh, my! What joy!”
He observed that she was now down on all fours, crawling around the basket, which was fully the size of Johnson County and loaded with everything from yellow tulips and lavender foxglove to pink roses and purple verbena.
“Umm! Oh, goodness! Look, dearest, could it be heliotrope? And there! See the tiny mushrooms growing in the moss?”
“Who’s it from?” he asked, squatting down to where the action was.
She removed the card from the French wire ribbon. “Let’s see…. Well! Have you ever?”
No, he had never. “Who?” he asked.
“Dear James!”
“Dear James?”
“You know, darling, my editor.”
“Aha.”
“‘My dear Cynthia,’” she read aloud from the card. “‘Please accept this smallest of tokens for the joy you have brought so many. Congratulations!’”
“Dear James, dear Cynthia?” This inquiry, spoken with uncharacteristic sarcasm, was out of his mouth before he knew it. His face flamed.
Just as it took very, very little to make his wife happy, it took very little, indeed, to wound her deeply. She looked as if she’d been dashed with ice water.
“I’m sorry,” he said, dumbfounded by his feelings. Where had that sudden, bitter jealousy come from?
He reached toward her, but she drew back. “I’ve never heard you…speak that way before,” she whispered.
Tears sprang to his eyes. “I don’t know, I’m sorry, please forgive me.” He felt oddly lost, bereft, as if a great chasm had opened between them.
She leaned her head to one side and looked at him for a long moment. Then she smiled. “It’s all right, dearest,” she said, taking his hand.
CHAPTER THREE
The Future Hour
He settled into his chair in the study, swiveled around to the desk, and tore off several calendar pages.
May 21st, vanished!
May 22nd, defunct!
May 23rd, out of here!
Where had time gone? He hadn’t penned a word in nearly a month. But there’d be no guilt; he’d sworn to enjoy the process and not kick himself for failing to churn out a predetermined volume of work. The book would happen when it happened.
He put his mind to the thing before him.
“‘Enough, if something from our hands have power,’” he recited aloud, “‘to live and act and serve the future hour….’”
This new essay would address the couplet from Wordsworth; it put forth an issue he’d been searching in his heart, whether indeed he’d done anything in nearly forty years as a priest that would truly serve the future hour. He needed to know the answer, the honest answer. Writing to search the soul had often helped; more than once this had enabled him to arrive at a better understanding of a personal issue. He thought, too, that the whole subject might be of interest to others—didn’t everyone fervently desire to leave a mark, to make a difference? In truth, mortality had been one of mankind’s most devouring disappointments—having only a brief time to make a difference, one forever felt the pressure to get cracking.
He picked up the black pen and relished its solid heft; for years, he’d wished for a fine pen, something more than the annual Christmas ballpoint from The Local, or the sundry poor excuses in his pen cup that multiplied like wire hangers in a closet. And now, in honor of this book of essays, his good wife had given him a black roller ball with a white emblem on the cap; he couldn’t imagine what it might have cost—it had bucks written all over it. Maybe he’d use the pen today instead of his typewriter; after all, had Montaigne used a typewriter, or Proust, or Emerson?
He peered at the decrepit Royal manual that had served him well for longer than he could remember. It had gone through his sixteen-year tenure at Lord’s Chapel and was still working like a clock, except for the lowercase i, which often printed ii; he’d always meant to have that fixed and now nobody repaired typewriters anymore.
Dooley trotted down the hall to the kitchen, which opened directly to the study, and examined the contents of the refrigerator. He popped the top on a Coke and glanced at Father Tim. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself.” Father Tim felt the grin on his face.
“What’s going on?” Dooley asked.
He opened his mouth to answer, but Dooley didn’t wait for an answer; the question was rhetorical. He vanished down the hall, the soles of his tennis shoes squeaking on the pine floor.
Dooley. Of course! It was Dooley who, through whatever bumbling influence he’d had upon the boy’s life, would serve the future hour. Yes!
He felt the sting of tears in his eyes and got up and crossed the study and went to the kitchen and peered down the hall, hoping to see Dooley before he reached the front door. He wanted to tell him something, he couldn’t think what, exactly. But Dooley was gone.
His wife was gone, too, he’d forgotten just where, and his study was quiet as a tomb, the whole house seemed in a kind of repose which he should savor, but he could not. He listened to his dog snoring in the corner and observed Violet sleeping on the sofa. Violet, who was no longer a spring chicken, had lately begun to snore, as well. He stood for a moment listening to the odd cacophony, the delicate whiffle from the sofa, the bass rumble from the corner of the room near his desk. If he didn’t watch out, he’d join the throng any moment. In truth, the world was standing still until Cynthia came in the door; it was as if half of him were missing—his better half.
Better half! He’d once found this term as quaint as missus. But he was wiser now, and wasn’t she indeed his better half? The half that laughed more easily? The half that didn’t take life so seriously? The half that was more spontaneous and free, more expectant of God’s blessings, more certain, at times, of His love?
He heard the tolling of the bells at Lord’s Chapel, a mere block away, and checked his watch. Three o’clock. Thirsty, he was very thirsty, but returned to his desk and sat as if asleep until he heard her come into the kitchen and set something on the counter. It was a glad sound; he wanted to rush to her, to see her face, but it was this very need that nailed him to the chair where he sat.
“What are you doing, dearest?”
“Thinking!” he said.
“Thinking? But you’ve been thinking for hours. You were thinking when I left!”
He picked up a piece of paper, trying to feign scholarly absorption. In truth, there was absolutely nothing on the paper; it was blank. He put it down and fumbled in his desk drawer.
“It’s a gorgeous day, Timothy!” Rustle of bags in the kitchen, a few things from The Local, he supposed. It was her night to make dinner.
“Just gorgeous!” she crowed.
His wife wanted someone to play with, he could tell—a walk around Mitford Lake, perhaps, or a drive on the Parkway with the top down. Couldn’t she see he was busy with something important? He grabbed a book off the stack by his desk and opened it. At once he felt filled with authority, as if he were knowledgeable and wise and she a child without purpose.
She came and stood by his chair and looked at him fondly. “Timothy, you think too much!”
He couldn’t believe he was hearing those words from his wife, words he’d heard since childhood—from his mother, his teachers, his first bishop, even from Stuart Cullen. What was too much? Who was to say which chalk line one should think up to and then come to a screeching halt? What if Wordsworth had never thought too much, or Shakespeare or Milton or Cranmer or Socrates? And what about Beethov
en or Edison or…Madame Curie? Why was thinking such a crime?
“Why is thinking such a crime?” he asked, oddly angry.
“Oh, pfoo, darling!” She threw up her hands and walked back to the kitchen.
He didn’t want her to leave the room, he wanted her to stay, he wanted her to…sit on his lap and ruffle what was left of his hair. He felt suddenly small and bereft. In a fleeting moment, she had become the authority and he the child without purpose.
Dear George,
As you know, we won’t be here when you arriive on June 15, as we leave June 1 for Tennessee. Everything iis finalized for your arrival. Our upstairs tenant at the rectory, Helene Priingle, has approved your moving into the basement apartment with Harley Welch, and ii believe the two of you wiill do fine together. Harleyi is a pretty darned good cook and hi s brownies can’t be beat. He’ll be glad for the company. Anything you can do in the yard for Miss Pringle will be appreciated.
harley wiill take you to a body shop I n Wesley, where he thinks there may be a job available. he could Drive you each morning before he goes to work at his job in Mitford. I also have a few friends looking out for you, and have mentioned iit to Avis Packard of the Local, who is going to replace his delivery truck driiver at the end of June.
Rodney Underwood is still our police chief and is aware that you’re coming. He invites you to stop by the station and say hello to the guys who attended your baptiism ceremony, they’re all still there except the good fellow who gave you the socks.
the rectory basement isn’t the Ritz, but we Believe you’ll be comfortable. The mattress on the sofa bed is a little lumpy but only on the left siide. Remember the orange marmalade cake you called ‘the finest cake you ever ate in your life’? that same good parishioner has offered to put one in the basement refrigerator for your arrival.
Mmay God bless you George as you go about the considerable business of making a new life. Cynthia and I deeply regret that we can’t be here to welcome you but we’ll be home on leave for a long weekendi in September, and home for good in June of next year.
